Our last stop of the day was the Prince Gong Mansion, owned by the brother of Emperor Gong. Beside his property he had a building made that was 160 meters long to keep all of his treasure inside. This also showed how much wealth he wanted to obtain. The mansion with a huge outdoor garden landscape was decorated using feng shui. The first thing you see at the entrance is a rock that looks like a fish, which is the symbol for treasure so he kept it to help him acquire more. Also, if you look at the rock from a different angle it looks like a woman holding a baby. After the prince went to visit his brother the emperor he saw the rock and at the time was having troubles having a son, all of his wives had only had daughters. He made his servants carry the stone all the way back to his mansion and the next year he had a son.
The garden was so gorgeous and fun to just walk around in. I wish we had had more time to look around. It was ancient China like you envision it from the movies. There was a large building with a lot of outdoors and gardens and shade and archways and beauty.
A pleasant surprise was when we got to stop and have a ceremonial tea pouring. We sat on furniture that was original to the property and tried four types of tea that was brewed in tealeaves in front of us. The tea lady was very nice and spoke excellent English. The group favorite was the last tea, which was made of dried cherries, peaches and rose petals. I used my digital camera to take a video of the experience and hope to get it on youtube at some point in time so you can see it too.
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